Abstract

This analysis of the fishers' compliance with regulations in Lake Victoria, Tanzania, gives support to the traditional economics-of-crime model and shows that the extension of the basic deterrence model can lead to a richer model with substantially higher explanatory power. It focused on mesh-size regulation to explore potential reasons for following the rules (or not), such as being moral and doing the right thing; obeying the rules due to peer pressure from other fishers; perceiving the regulation as legitimate; and perceiving that they (the fishers) have been involved in the regulation process.